A Newport man, identified as Nevin Ryan, 28, was apprehended by undercover police detectives and drugs were seized during the operation. He was arrested after the law enforcement caught him driving a car without a legal license. Prosecutor Clare Wilks told the court that the police detectives seized cocaine, marijuana, and a mobile phone which had messages related to dark web drugs.

The prosecutor told Judge Jeremy Jenkins that after the police detectives analyzed the suspect’s phone, they found a conversation that mentioned crack cocaine, which had the purity of about 80 percent and was referred to as ‘rocket fuel.’ The text messages retrieved from the conversation revealed that he was using the dark web to purchase and redistribute the drugs to his customers.

The conversation also contained many details pertaining to drug prices and the quantities of pure cocaine and other drugs smuggled. The prosecutor told the court that the suspect was a wholesale supplier of cannabis.

After the judge read out the charges against the suspect, the 28-year-old man pleaded guilty to the charges. The charges included possessing crack cocaine with the intention to distribute. He was also charged with possessing cannabis with the intention to distribute. Ryan was also charged with acquiring cocaine which was a total breach of a suspended jail term sentence he had been given.

According to the lawyer representing Ryan, David Pinnel, his client had received a couple of messages which were about dark web drug smuggling, oblivious of where they came from. He continued to say that Ryan was just a homeless man who lived in the streets, prone to drug traffickers and users around him. He also said that at the time of arrest, his client had been addicted to cocaine, thus all the drugs were for personal use.

During the hearing, the judge was told that the defendant was making positive progress in changing his behaviors. This led to Judge Jenkins sentencing the suspect to three years and four months behind bars, lesser than what was expected. The judge also ordered the suspect to pay a victim surcharge fine.

The undercover police agents have taken the fight against dark web crime to another level in order to have the cybercriminals hiding behind screens and darknet anonymity brought to book. This has given the police detectives an upper hand as they are able to disguise themselves as dark web vendors with potential illegal products ready for shipment.

Working together with postal inspectorate services and other carrier agencies, law enforcement has intercepted quite a number of deadly drugs, like fentanyl and cocaine. The drug enforcement agency has worked very hard to educate the public about the danger lurking in consuming counterfeit drugs purchased from dark web marketplaces.

Drug traffickers have been mixing the traditional method of smuggling drugs with the new way of using the darknet to reach more customers worldwide. The traditional method, which includes street hustles, has ended up with lots of people landing behind bars for decades. On the other hand, the darknet method which offers substantial anonymity has helped business flourish with time. However, there are vulnerabilities, which law enforcement has been exploiting to arrest dark web drug traffickers.

At the top of the list is the use of mail deliveries which police detectives have been tracking to apprehend the end receiver and the sender. The other major vulnerability that has helped law enforcement intercept darknet drug trafficking is that police better understand the blockchain technology so as to track cryptocurrency transactions and details revealing the sender and the receiver. The Federal Bureau of Investigations has invested heavily in researching blockchain technology to see the anonymity offered by crypto coins, like Bitcoin, is understood and used to arrest criminals.

As you may remember, recently, dark web vendors selling the deadly drug, fentanyl, came out strongly saying they are no longer selling the opioid fentanyl drug anymore. It is a move that has greatly changed the way drug users perceive the drug as they now know that it’s a killer drug due to its high potency. It will be up to drug consumers to be more careful than ever and to lookout for the killer fentanyl as there is a high possibility of death caused by the drug overdose.